We're told this an email sent to Fox News staff today from its senior vice president of news editorial, John Moody. We have no confirmation that it's from him, and — come to think of it — we'd be thrilled to know we're totally wrong:
If you're not from the suburbs — and, come on, deep down, though you may not admit it, aren't we all at some level — you may not be familiar with the weekly regional sections of the Times. They're the suburban equivalents of the City section, part of the metropolitan edition of the Sunday paper — as distinct from the national edition — in New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island, and Westchester. (Factoid: In Rockland County, a suburban county in New York State but west of the Hudson, you get the New Jersey section.) They're actually pretty interesting, with a nice mix of news and features tailored to each of these major suburban areas. Or, at least, that's what they were. And freelancer for the Long Island section forwards along this news:
Only because we want to provide you with all the information you might need for effective stalking of Graydon Carter or Anna Wintour, we feel obliged to pass along an admittedly fairly boring internal Conde Nast memo from earlier in the week. It's real-estate news:
Bill Keller makes it official this morning: Boldface, the Times kinda-sorta gossip column, will end its amusing and sometimes awkward run Friday. (Related question: What is this damned column actually called? In the current design of the Metro section, it's clearly slugged as merely "Boldface." People refer to it as "Boldface Names," which we assumed that was a mere vestigial holdover from previous layouts, when the column actually bore that title. But now Keller is calling it "Boldface Names" as well, and one would assume he knows. So maybe B2 simply gets the name wrong, and we're wrong to follow B2's lead? We have no idea.) Keller also confirms that bearded Boldfacer Campbell Robertson is having "a romance with the Culture Department," which we're taking to mean his rumored move to the Broadway-reporting beat is in fact in the offing. We've asked Campbell for comment; we hope to have something appropriately witty and narrative — perhaps with a showtunes reference! — shortly.
We know it's been bugging you. Why can't the Times have freelancers and stringers who are as ethical as its staff reporters? (Because Times staffers are always paragons of ethics, right, David Pogue?) But now there's no more need to worry, kids. A mere three years after the Jayson Blair scandal broke, and a lickety-split year after the Siegal Committee delivered its report, the paper is pleased to announce its finally figured out how to ensure freelancers' integrity. Effective today, all Times freelancers and stringers won't be allowed to work for that paper until they have — of all onerous burdens — completed a questionnaire.
ELLEgirl is still shutting down, and its staffers are still confused about why. As FishbowlNY pointed out yesterday, all the mag's numbers were looking good. "We feel that it's inexplicable," a source on staff emailed. "We worked our asses off on a shoestring budget to make — sorry — the best teen magazine out there. The numbers showed it, and so did the content. It's unbelievable."
As WWD reported this morning, Details wunderkind Brian Farnham — who in five years there rose to the No. 2 position at the mag — resigned yesterday to become the new editor-in-chief of Time Out New York. TONY has been EIC-less since Joe Angio left at Christmastime to focus on promoting his documentary on Melvin Van Peebles. There were apparently "many, many, MANY
candidates interviewed" for the job — which presumably explains why it was open for so long — and Farnham will be starting May 1. After the jump, dueling memos: A terse — and head-patting — farewell from Details chief Dan Peres, and a gushing welcome from Time Out president Alison Tocci.
And at 4:30 in the afternoon, Arthur Sulzberger notices there've been changes to his website:
This showed up in our inbox overnight. We're told Maer sent it to the staffers he's planning to hire when/if Radar restarts. We don't know if that's true, and we don't know if this is real. But isn't it fun to assume it is?
The New York Times Co. paid Arthur Sulzberger a salary and bonus of $1.6 million in 2005, but don't think that means things are flush on 43rd Street. Quite the contrary: AME Bill Schmidt put out a memo this morning reminding employees of the current "period of financial angst" and all the ways everyone can cut back to make sure the paper makes it through. So remember, all you rank-and-file reporters and editors: Take a layover for a cheaper airfare. Brown-bag your departmental lunches. Share your newspaper and magazine subscriptions. And, for the love of God, never ever direct-dial a call from a hotel room. There is, however, one bit of good news in all this. If you cannot find a cab, or if you're coming from a place where a yellow cab to the airport would cost a fortune, car services are once again acceptable. Hurrah!
Health-and-fitness people tend to be rah-rah enthusiastic sorts — folks like us prefer sloth, booze, and cynicism — and so it's not particularly surprising that Rodale CEO Steve Murphy sent a 10-paragraph, 800-word internal memo congratulating his staff on the company's eight finalists for this year's National Magazine Awards. Still, even so, the hyperbole is a bit, well, over the top:
A memo today from Times deputy managing editor Jon Landman, he of the famous "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now" messsage, announces some backed staffing changes at the paper. The guy who's been running the continuous news desk, Bill Brink, is moving over to be managing editor Play, the new sports mag, and also work on "rich web projects" during the lulls in the quarterly production sked. Jim Roberts becomes the new director of continuous news. But he'll be doing more than Brink did in that capacity, because apparently the Times now thinks this whole online-news thing might be worth paying attention to.
We just received in our inbox Time Inc. chief John Huey's announcement of three high-level promotions at Entertainment Weekly. The news — Jay Woodruff to managing editor of EW.com, Henry Goldblatt to executive editor responsible for front-of-book, and Mark Harris to executive editor responsible for film coverage — was reported in the Post this morning, so we were finding the memo rather uninteresting. Until we noticed a certain snippet of each man's bio caught our eye:
Got plans for March 7? Because we know now what we'll be doing: It's State of the Times time! From an all-staff email sent very, very early this morning:
This memo went out to the Times business-news staff Friday afternoon from the department's administrator:
Buck up, little camper. It's not that Remnick didn't appreciate that brilliant pitch for your breakthrough piece; we're sure he loved it. He just can't get word to you. Or at least that's what you can keep telling yourself, thanks to a forwarded memo we received from several tipsters within Conde Nast:
Time Warner announced today that it has (finally!) sold off the Time Warner Book Group — Warner Books and Little, Brown — to the French publisher Lagardere. TWBG was part of Time Inc., and chairman Ann Moore sent a memo to her employees earlier today on the sale. It is, undoubtedly, an anxious time for book group employees, as it is always is when there are major corporate changes at your employer. But we suspect that in the long run the book folks will be the lucky ones.
Two memos went out at the Times today, and we can't help but see a connection.
Ken Auletta did a major New Yorker profile of Arthur Sulzberger Jr. at the end of last year, and at one point in it he described Bill Keller, the Times editor, as "at times, given to strange jokes." We took that to refer to Keller's inexplicable affection for something-in-the-water-that-makes-your-penis-fall-off punchlines. (See: Here and here.)
